The Wall Street Journal
March 13, 2006
'A Petty Hitler'
By WESLEY K. CLARK
March 13, 2006
Slobodan Milosevic's death in The Hague is a real tragedy for the international community. But most of all it will be a tragedy for the Serbs themselves. It will likely be another step in a series of historic Serb failures, martyrdom and isolation, all of which Milosevic himself grandly evoked to gain and maintain his power. I knew him as a nationalist leader and wartime adversary.
(snip)
In his 64 years, Milosevic was an army officer, a Communist, a bureaucrat, a banker and, above all, a Yugoslav Serb who used his skills and harsh nationalist rhetoric to parley himself into the highest office in Yugoslavia only to then alienate and attack his fellow Yugoslav citizens. In four successive conflicts which he all lost, Milosevic used war as a means of plundering and disassembling his own country. He forced millions from their homes and caused several hundred thousands of deaths. He was rational and sometimes cunning, often a brilliant tactical negotiator but ultimately a fool of a strategist, whose reckless crimes included murder and genocide, and who has cost humanity as a whole and his own Serbs dearly.
(snip)
During the many hours of our negotiations in the summer and autumn of 1995, we dined with him, chatted with him about history and geopolitics, and talked about everything from his experiences as a young man in America to his concerns for his family. Given his gruff, commanding manner, many joked during the Dayton peace talks that he was the real Godfather. But we quickly came to think of him more appropriately as a petty Hitler, an unlawful dictator capable of malice, murder and ethnic cleansing. Any arrangement with him had to be weighed morally: for its legitimization of Milosevic as well as its value in ending a bloody conflict.
(snip)
In the spring of 1998 he unleashed the next round of ethnic cleansing in the Balkans, this time turning his Special Police against a prominent Albanian family in Kosovo, killing 60 of them, including women and children. For most of that year NATO struggled to find a balanced approach, alternating negotiations with intensifying threats to head off another war in former Yugoslavia. But Milosevic foolishly believed he could defy NATO warnings and launch a broad ethnic cleansing effort with impunity.
(snip)
History's longest war crimes trial will never be concluded. Milosevic's many victims and their families will be denied justice. And the Serb people themselves will have one more escape from the awful truth of the crimes under Milosevic's leadership. His death comes at a bad time. Serbia is struggling to acknowledge its past and face its future. Indicted war criminals like Ratko Mladic and Radovan Karadzic are still at large -- most likely living under official protection. The future status of Kosovo is unresolved and Serb participation in a resolution would be helpful. Another challenge will be Montenegro's upcoming referendum on its independence. And even as Serbia looks westward for help, its future alignment is still unsettled as the Serb people struggle to recognize how badly they have been deceived and misled.
(snip)
Mr. Clark was supreme allied commander of NATO during the 1999 Kosovo campaign and a Democratic candidate for the U.S. presidency in 2004.
URL for this article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB114221915589996318.html (subscription, unless someone can find a free copy someplace else)
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